the ghost of you
by Los Desperados
Summary: Set in 5x18. While he is chained in Bobby's panic room, Dean gets an unexpected visitor. Dean/Jo.


**status **complete  
**prompt **7.04, actually. Jo's return was _epic.  
_**warnings **spoilers for S5, minor language  
**pairings **slight Dean/Jo  
**background **5.18; set about after Cas beats Dean into a bloody pulp and they cuff him inside the panic room, and after Adam goes missing.  
**notice** I don't know why, but I just can't let Jo go. Even though she went out with a bang (which I totally approve), her end was so _unecessary._ Damn you, Kripke. So, here's another attempt in the SPN fandom. The first and last "scene" are from episode 5.18, Point Of No Return. Such an awesome episode. Wasn't Adam's cameo just _fantasterrific_? I think SPN just _stopped_ for me after Season 5. Well, _jouir._

* * *

**THE GHOST OF YOU  
**

* * *

_"Is this really necessary?" Dean asked, gesturing to the four walls of Bobby's panic room, where his little brother deemed it essential to lock him up._

_Sam shrugged, his broad shoulders moving awkwardly. "Well, we've got our hands full, Dean. The house is full of flight risks."_

_Dean's eyes scrutinized Sam's face. "I'm not letting him do it," he replied sternly, with a tone that Sam had learned to identify as irreversible._

_The younger Winchester's eyebrows rose up in confusion."What, Adam? No, I'm… I'm not either."_

_"No," Dean said, showing his back to his brother. Sam silently noted that his brother's shoulders were tense."You're not getting me."_

_"No, I get you. Perfectly," Sam countered seriously as Dean sighed to himself. "But I'm not letting **you** do it either."_

* * *

Dean startled out of his sleep when he heard someone pad across the floor. They were pacing the room tirelessly. The gears in Dean's brain began working rapidly. Who the Hell got inside the panic room? By the sound of their footsteps, it wasn't Sam. That damn Sasquatch didn't exactly have a light stepping.

Couldn't have been Cas, either. After Dean's late decision to venture out in the streets and tell Michael the long-awaited _yes_, and after the fallen angel had beaten the crap out of him for doing so, Dean doubted that Cas would come down there to have a word with him. He _did _use a blood seal to send him off to Venus or wherever. If he had been in Castiel's shoes, Dean would've kept the long face for a great deal more than a couple of hours.

The eldest Winchester silently ruled out his half-brother, too. Adam wasn't exactly enthralled to meet his brothers, and even less so to find out that they were keeping him from filling out the task the angels handed out to him in exchange for spending eternity with his mother in Heaven. He didn't seem to be rather fond of them, either. Not that Dean blamed the kid. This family; all they could offer was damnation.

Dean kept his breathing even, not wanting to clue the intruder on the fact that he was aware of their presence. He vaguely noticed that he was cuffed on the divan, and thus there wasn't much he could do, even if he managed to take the invader by surprise. Deciding that he didn't have much of a choice anyway, Dean slowly turned his head from the wall towards the room.

His eyes widened in visible shock — and horror — when they laid upon his visitor.

"_Jo_?" he managed to croak.

From the other side of the small room, the blonde woman smiled. "Hey, Dean. Long time no see."

Dean's eyes automatically shot to the salt line by the door, then to the sigils all over the walls, floor and ceiling. "How the Hell did you get in?" This wasn't good. He didn't know who the fuck was that thing standing in front of him, but whatever it was, all of Bobby's protection wasn't working against it.

Dean suppressed the urge to curse out loud. Just what they needed. Another kind of monsters they knew nothing about in order to go up against. Well, they ought to have gotten used to it by now.

Jo—the _thing,_ chuckled softly despite itself. "I'm not a ghost, Dean," it explained softly. "Ghosts can't cross salt lines, remember?"

Dean gritted his teeth together, sitting up slowly on the bed and cursing when the cuff on his wrist didn't give him enough liberty to move around. "Then _what_ are you?"

"Whoa_—_that's not a nice way to greet an old friend, Dean."

Dean's eyes narrowed and the creature seemed to squirm under the weight of his gaze. "_What_ are you?" he repeated calmly, though he was raging inside. Whatever that thing was, it wasn't gonna get away with wearing Jo's face.

"A memory," it said at last, taking a seat across from the bed Dean was lying on. "_Your_ memory."

The Winchester started at that. A _what? _"A _memory_? Like a hallucination?"

A nonchalant shrug. "Sort of. I mean, do you need hallucinations to finally accept that you're nuts?" It was meant to sound as a joke, but both of them knew the weight of the question.

"Haven't had trouble accepting that for years," Dean admitted casually, his suspiciousness still not completely vanquished, but subsided enough for him to accept her as Jo. Or an effigy of her, anyway. "Why're you here?"

"Why don't you ask yourself?" she asked, tilting her head slightly to the right. "It's _your_ mind, Dean."

Dean fell silent after that revelation. She was right, in a way. Jo had been haunting his mind a lot lately; especially since she'd been one of the people he saw back in the mental hospital he and Sam got themselves admitted to in order to get rid of that Wraith. He had hated what he saw in there. The wound of her and Ellen's loss was still too fresh, and Dean had detested seeing a ghost that looked like Jo blaming him for their deaths.

Because, in his mind, he actually _was_ at fault.

"I saw you in that hospital," Dean whispered hoarsely, keeping his eyes on the devil's trap drawn on the floor. A perfect one, it was; he'd have to remember to give Bobby his congrats on it later.

"I know," Jo replied in a tone he recalled Ellen using whenever he or Sam looked too worse for wear. "I hope you know that wasn't me."

"_This_ ain't either," he countered stubbornly, and perhaps a little solemnly, causing the blonde hunter to snort.

"Well, I don't blame you, Dean. I checked in that mission on my own free will. _I_ fell back to save you. And _I_ came up with the plan to blow myself up. Not _you_," she said slowly, as if trying to explain to a child that Santa Claus isn't real. "You didn't pull the trigger."

"I might as well have. You're not the first to die because of me, Jo."

She faintly noticed that he used her name for the first time that evening. It was a good sign, Jo thought. "_For_ you," she corrected. "Not because of."

Dean snorted. "Same difference. You're still dead."

"And _you_'re still a jerk," she argued, with the slightest tone of annoyance in her voice. "Only _now_, you're a jerk who's giving up."

Dean opened his mouth to talk back, but she cut him off.

"I mean, is _this_ what I died for, Dean? So you could just give yourself over to Michael?" When Dean didn't say anything in defense of himself and just hung his head in shame instead, she stood up and began pacing around the room.

"Cas is right, you know," she spoke up after a moment. Dean cringed at the mention of the angel. His face would be feeling those blows for _days_. "He gave up everything for you. He went against his own nature and family. He is killing his brothers and sisters. He _rebelled_," Jo emphasized on that. "Do you have any idea how difficult this has been for him? He can't have you bailing on him."

Jo made a long pause after that, letting everything sink in Dean's thick head. Somehow, she knew that she would never be able to make him see what was in front of his very own eyes, but this time, she was intending to try her hardest. She just hoped that, for once, he would actually listen to what she had to say.

"I'm _tired_, Jo," Dean finally said, and his voice was hoarse. He had already said that to Sam, but his younger brother refused to accept such an excuse. "I'm tired of everyone depending on me. I'm tired of trying to not let anyone down. I'm tired of being the hero, while everyone around me is dying. I just want this to _end_."

Jo's eyebrows knitted together. "The Dean _I_ knew _lived_ for people to depend on him. The Dean _I_ knew never gave up, no matter the circumstances. Are you telling me that this man is gone?"

He looked up at her, and she could see tears welling up in those beautiful green eyes. "That man died that day in Carthage, Jo." It pained him to admit it — and he had never told anyone before — but it was true. A part of him died in Carthage with Jo and Ellen. Those two women were more than important in the Winchesters' lives, and he had to see them go down _because _of him and Sam. That was when he'd decided that Jo and Ellen were the last people he'd ever let take the bullet for them. "I'm not gonna let anyone else die because of me."

"So, what?" she said somewhat irately. "Giving into Michael is going to change all that? It's gonna bring everyone you love back? It's gonna give you peace of mind or whatever? You'll _die_, Dean. Michael will use you to fight his brother, who's gonna be wearing Sam. Do you think there's even the slightest chance that you'll survive a battle between Michael and Lucifer?"

Dean gazed stubbornly at her face. "I don't. And I sure as Hell know this is a bad idea. But it's the _only_ choice I have. I ain't gonna let Adam take the bullet for me. I can't."

"Nobody's asking you to," Jo tried to reason, though she knew that Dean's mind was already made up.

"They might as well be," he replied, his eyes boring into hers. "If I say no, then Adam says yes. It's as simple as that."

At the disappointed and simply _abdicated_ look ghosting over his handsome features, Jo's eyes burned with sadness. Without the slightest hesitation, she seated herself next to him, taking his uncuffed hand in her two smaller ones. "You can't give up now, Dean. Not when you're humanity's last defender. I know you're tired, and I know you're scared. _I_ was, too. I didn't want to die in the hardware store of a backwater town in Missouri. But I thought that, if by holding back those hell-hounds_—_if that would give us _half_ a chance to kill Lucifer, then it was worth dying for."

Dean opened his mouth to counter her, but Jo pressed her fingertips against his lips to stop him. "Dean, I know that you want people to stop depending on you; you want to stop being an anchor for once. I know how you'd want a normal life. You may have been upset when Sam went off to Stanford, but you know that deep inside, you would've done that, too, if John wasn't holding you back. You going to Lisa the other day proves as much. But you _can't_ give up. Not now."

"I don't wanna do this anymore, Jo. I'm through with all this," Dean insisted. His eyes were pleading for her to understand that he was simply out of options. That he wasn't going to let this madness go on, because it wasn't fair. People shouldn't have to die because Lucifer decided to throw a temper tantrum and destroy Earth. "Michael can walk around in my meat suit for all I care. If he has a chance to stop Lucifer, then fine — because we ain't got half of it. We're not gonna win this war. We tried and we failed — one times too many already. We lost people on the road, _good_ people. And if Michael can put an end to that with only a simple yes from me, then so be it. I'm through with losing everything that's important to me in this life."

He watched as she licked her lips, trying to find the right words. Deep inside, he knew that she was aware that she couldn't talk him out of it. But hallucination or not, Jo Harvelle was as stubborn as they came. "You can't quit who you are, Dean. This self-sacrifice you've got going is getting a little old, don't you think?" she asked, furrowing her eyebrows slightly. "Bobby, Sam, Cas — they all get it. You're willing to give up everything to stop the Apocalypse. But surrendering is not who you are, Dean."

A moment of silence passed between them, before Jo smiled up at him tenderly and cupped his cheek with her palm. "Being everyone's anchor — I know it's hard, but it's what you do. You can't stop believing in yourself; not _now_. Not when Sam has finally began believing in your cause, in what you're fighting to preserve_—_in the fact that you can win this war, because you've got the nerve for it. He believes in _you_, Dean. And it's the damnedest thing for you to lose faith when Sam has finally found his."

"This isn't about faith, Jo," Dean muttered wearily. "This is about some dickhead angel wanting to wipe off our planet and kill us all, because he's got daddy issues. This isn't me giving up. This is us, running out of options and out of time. Too many people have gotten killed for this already. So, I'm sorry, Jo, but I'm not gonna sit my ass down and watch another human die, just because I was too proud to say yes."

She let her hand trail down his jaw and throat before giving him a firm pat on his chest. Jo sighed deeply before standing up from the bed. Dean made to follow her, but his cuffed wrist slowed him down. _Damn it, Sammy._

"So, Michael's gonna wear your body, walk up to Lucifer, hand him his ass, and then leave for Heaven like nothing ever happened?" she asked sarcastically. "They're gonna wipe out half the planet, Dean."

"Well, if I don't say yes, Lucifer's gonna destroy all of it by himself," Dean spat back, obviously irate. "Now, I know that our only option quite frankly _sucks_, but at this point, I've gotta choose the lesser evil. And that's Michael."

Jo fixed him a stony glare and the Winchester felt a part of his anger subside. He had no reason to be yelling at the memory of Jo, of all people. "What about what you said to Michael back in Lawrence? That you can choose what you do with your unimportant, little life? What happened to make you change your mind?"

"What _didn't_ happen's more like it," Dean answered with a sad smile. "We're losing, Jo. Every day, we get one step farther from killing Lucifer. We've got nothing. And now they're threatening to use Adam instead of me. Well, I can't let them do that. If someone has to do this, then that's me. And that's my pathetic choice. Not Michael's, not Zachariah's—_mine. I_ chose to say yes, and I will."

"What about Sam, then? If you say yes, then so will he and you know it. In the end, it'll be you against Sam. Do you really want that, Dean? Because you won't be unconscious. You may not be able to control your body, but you will be _there_, watching as Michael fights your brother. And it's not gonna be pretty."

He mentally cringed at how fluently this came to her. Had Jo been possessed by a demon at some point? God, he hoped that she hadn't. Because if she _had_, then he'd tear down the sky to kill the son of a bitch who dared get inside her body. "I'm willing to put up with it, if it means that even one person can be saved."

"Bullshit," Jo growled. "You don't want this. And if Adam hadn't come into play, you wouldn't even consider it. You're a fighter, Dean. That's all you've ever known; fighting. And that's what I've always admired in you. That you always went out of your way for a good fight. To put down as many sons of bitches as you could. Even when you made the deal to save Sam, you still didn't back down. You had only a year left, but you still fought to make it count." She paused to cross her arms, and a sad smile adorned her features. "I never thought you'd stop fighting when it was most necessary for you to keep going."

Dean sighed and leaned back against the wall. "What would you have me do, Jo? This fight ain't getting any easier. And it's not even _our_ fight. Sam and I—we're just the means to their end; their vessels."

"Don't you see it?" Jo exclaimed, coming to stand between his legs. "This _is_ about you. _You_'re Michael's vessel. _You_'re the one who's been saving all those people since Lucifer got loose. _You_'re the one who's willing to sacrifice himself in order to save everyone. This is _your_ fight, Dean. It always has been. And, _Hell_—if the whole damn universe got out of its way to make sure that you'd be _born_, then you might as well get out there and fight like a madman."

All of a sudden, Jo straddled his hips, taking a seat on his lap and cupping his face in her hands. Dean swore that his breath hitched in his throat. "You're _not_ weak. And you're _not_ gonna give up. You're gonna go out there and _fight._ You won't say yes, Dean. You'll keep fighting like you always did, and you'll find a way to fix this without letting Michael make you his bitch. And you know why you'll manage to do all that? Because you're a hero. Because every damn _fiber_ of your being is telling you _not_ to say yes." She smiled lovingly. "And, you know what? You won't. You won't say yes to Michael. You'll fight. Fight until you can't make a step farther and then some more. 'Cause that's what you are, Winchester. A stubborn son of a bitch."

Dean didn't resist the urge to laugh out loud. For a dead girl, she sure had _balls_. He didn't regret calling her a pistol all those years back in Philadelphia. "Why do you believe in me so much?"

Jo shared his seemingly relaxed expression. "Because I loved you. What? I did." She gave him a light punch in the chest when he snorted at her confession.

"Nobody can love this guy here," Dean explained. "I'm too cursed for that."

Jo raised an eyebrow at him, the fingers of her left hand playing with the short hair at the base of his neck. "What about Lisa? You seemed to give her a chance."

"How do _you_ know about Lisa?" he asked darkly.

She snorted. "Memory, hello?"

That answer seemed to satisfy him for the moment. "She's different. Plus, it's not like we're gonna win this war, so I can go back to her."

"But you _want_ to."

"Is it a crime for a guy to dream?"

"A minute ago you were ready to say yes to Michael. Hell, a couple of hours ago you almost _did_."

Dean looked down at where Jo was sitting on his lap. It wasn't that he wasn't enjoying that change in the mood. A little light-heartedness in this craziness was like an oasis in the desert, but he couldn't help the wrenching feeling in his gut. "I'm sorry, Jo."

The woman in question shrugged. "No sweat. So long as Castiel stopped you before you did anything stupid, I'll deal."

Dean grabbed ahold of her wrists. "No, Jo. I'm _sorry._"

It took Jo a long moment of staring into those beautiful green eyes of his to finally understand what he was apologizing for. She smiled. "It's okay, Dean. I never blamed you for my death. If nothing else, I was completely consenting."

"You know, the night before," Dean started, gazing into her eyes. Jo was taken aback by the complete sincerity mirrored in them. "When I asked you… When I gave you the 'last night on Earth' speech—it wasn't because we could die the next day."

Despite herself, Jo grinned. It might have taken him _way too long_, but Dean Winchester finally grew the balls to admit he was actually able of harboring feelings for someone. It was just her luck that this someone was her.

And just their misfortune that she _did _die that day.

"I know," she replied softly. "Those kind of things just clear out when you're dead."

"No hard feelings?"

Jo raised her eyebrows. "What for? Because you didn't proclaim your undying love for me? Sweetheart, if I knew that there was even the slightest chance that you _would_, I wouldn't have let myself die back there."

A low chuckle reverberated inside his chest. Slowly, Dean raised his left hand to caress her hair. _God, it almost feels like she's here._ Then, a smile lit up his features. "Wrong place, wrong time, huh?"

She shrugged casually. "Has it ever been any other way with us?" Jo asked sarcastically. They stared at each other for a long, silent moment, before she leaned into him and pressed a feathery kiss against Dean's lips. "You won't say yes," she repeated her previous statement, as if saying it multiple times would somehow get the meaning of it engraved inside his big, thick head.

"Why not?" Dean murmured, his eyes moving from her eyes to her lips and back.

"Because, when the time comes, you'll make the right choice. You'll see what you have to do. And you'll keep fighting, like you always do. You won't let us down." She made a face that indicated she was thinking. "Plus, this way, if you fall, you'll fall like a hero. And I'm _so_ waiting for one at the other side."

Dean laughed heartily at that, so much that tears formed on the corners of his eyes. And Jo joined him. Because it didn't matter if she was dead or if he was cursed. That moment, the Apocalypse, Michael, Lucifer, angels, demons—everything faded away to allow them a single moment with each other. A small fracture of the time that was stolen from them, never to be returned.

When he woke up, Dean would have to face the horrors of tomorrow, walk inside the belly of the beast, pretend that he was going to actually become the vessel of Michael, lose one of his brothers and almost betray the other's trust on him. When he woke up, he would have a similar conversation with Sam, during which his stubbornness would once again resurface.

But all that didn't matter to him at that moment. Because as he held Jo in his arms, peppering her with touches and words he'd never dared to use before, he wasn't Michael's vessel. He wasn't the world's savior or a soldier. He was simply a man who had lost everything too many times; a man who needed to forget, if only for a small, fleeting moment.

And so, Dean Winchester dreamt.

* * *

"You think Adam's okay?" Sam asked him in the aftermath, as the two Winchester brothers were driving back to Bobby's.

"Doubt it. Cas either," Dean replied truthfully. He knew that the blood seal could send an angel to Jupiter when used by an outsider, but Castiel had carved the seal on his chest, and thus Dean suspected that it would take him a while to get back to their home base. "But we'll get 'em," he added as an afterthought, as if to reassure his brother.

The youngest Winchester chewed on his lower lip. "So?"

Dean tore his eyes off the road, looking at his brother. "So what?"

"I saw your eyes," Sam explained, threading into places that Dean didn't quite feel like walking across at the time being. "You were totally rocking to yes back there. So, what changed your mind?"

An image of Jo's smiling face flashed before Dean's eyes, causing his lips to curve upwards slightly. She was the one who kept him from saying yes to Michael. It was her memory that he couldn't soil. Their last meeting a few hours prior was the swan song of whatever they once had. Even without being there physically, she gave him the strength to keep fighting. To not destroy everything they had been building all those years of hunting.

It was Jo's voice that echoed in his brain as Zachariah was summoning Michael. It was her voice that made Dean change his mind.

_He believes in you, Dean. And it's the damnedest thing for you to lose faith when Sam has finally found his._

But he couldn't tell Sam that. He couldn't let his brother on in the feelings he actually possessed for the blonde hunter. Jo was dead and she wasn't coming back. There was no need for Sam to know that he may have actually loved her at some point. Or that he _still_ did—perhaps.

So, he lied.

"Honestly? The_ damnedest_ thing. I mean, the world's ending, the walls are coming down on us. I look over to you and all I can think about is,_ this stupid son of a bitch brought me here_." At this, Sam smiled. "I just didn't wanna let you down."

"You didn't," he assured his brother. "You almost did, but you didn't."

They drove in silence for a few seconds, before Dean spoke up again, and this time his tone was dead serious. "I owe you an apology."

Sam was taken aback. "No, man. No, you don't—"

"Just… let me say this." Sam sighed and let him go on. "I don't know if it's being a big brother or what, but to me you've always been this snot-nose kid that I had to keep on the straight and narrow." Dean looked at him. "I think we both know that's not you anymore. I mean, hell, if you've grown up enough to find faith in me, the least I can do is return the favor."

"So, screw destiny, right in the face," he concluded. "I say we take the fight to them and do it our way."

After all, he had promised to see Jo on the other side later, rather than sooner. And, for once, it was a promise he intended to keep. Because seeing her again was incentive enough for him to keep going; to keep fighting until every cell of his body was collapsing. Only then, Dean would allow himself to give up. Jo had made sure to remind him of that.

Unaware of Dean's ponderings, however, Sam nodded, a smile tugging at his lips. His brother was finally back in the game and that was all that mattered. "Sounds good."

_You won't say yes to Michael. You'll fight. Fight until you can't make a step farther and then some more. 'Cause that's what you are, Winchester. A stubborn son of a bitch._

And for all intents and purposes, he was planning to prove her right on this one.


End file.
